Fasteners are used for various industrial as well as home applications. Fasteners typically have a head, a shank, a length, a gauge (a measurement of diameter) and a weight--all of which can vary. In most instances, the fastener'features such as shape, length, gauge and weight play an integral role in determining the type of fastener to use for a certain application. Both purchasers and users of fasteners need to be able to quickly recognize the fastener's dimensions. Therefore, it is important and helpful to provide the purchaser and user of fasteners with this information.
For nails, two important dimensions that should be readily recognizable are the length and the gauge of the nail. The length and the gauge of nails are generally provided on or in the packaging that nails are sold or displayed with in a store. However, it would be advantageous to provide such information about the nail on the nail itself.
Means for identifying various features of fasteners on the fastener itself are known in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,120,174 discloses a shell which fits over a nut and has means such as an arrow for indicating whether the nut has rotated. U.S. Pat. No. 5,098,240 discloses the use of dots, lines, or hatch marks on the head or shank of a shear pin to indicate the orientation of the plies, the orientation of the layers, or the orientation of the fibers within the shear pin. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,550,244, a method is disclosed for coding dowel pins with colors and different shaped indentations to indicate the dimensional variance of the dowel pin. U.S. Pat. No. 2,764,886 discloses the use of electrical cell screw heads having cross slots, circular slots, or a single slot to indicate the type of electrical service provided by the different electrical cells. In addition, U.S. Pat. No. 1,241,290 discloses the use of colors, symbols and characters on the heads of map push pins to keep record of routes, territories, highways, surveys, or bridges and to locate work sites on a map, chart, or diagram. Finally, in U.S. Pat. No. 752,588, a rivet head having intaglio characters for identifying the manufacturer of the rivet is disclosed.
None of the above-listed references disclose or even suggest placing indicators which graphically identify the dimensions such as length and gauge of the fastener on the fastener head itself. Such identification is particularly advantageous in states on the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts where natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes occur. Because these natural disasters are capable of and often do destroy homes and buildings, these states as well as others have enacted very strict building codes. These building codes require buildings and homes to be constructed according to strict rules which specify that certain construction materials and types of fasteners must be used. Graphic indicia indicating the length and gauge of the fastener thus allow an inspector to quickly determine whether the fasteners used in the structure comply with the building codes by simply looking at the fastener head. Therefore, the cumbersome and destructive task of removing the fasteners from the material they are embedded in to determine if the correct fasteners were used is avoided.